I read a lot of monographs over the last year for my Ph.D. exams, and there were a number of times where I wanted to find the author and shout, “But what are you saying about Thomas Hardy!? You’re just saying Tess of the D’Urbervilles is kinda like this other thing. I’d give my students a […]
Freshman English
Ovular Logic
In the opening scene of Orson Welles’ 1962 adaptation of The Trial, a suddenly awakened and apparently under arrest Mr. K. (Anthony Perkins) responds to the oblique requests of police inspectors. One inspector begins to document the evidence in the room by writing in a notebook. This writing, we learn in several ways, is a […]
Sprouting Acorns
On my rather long drive in today, the first day of classes, I noticed that the leaves have conspired to announce the academic year as they transform from a deep summer green to the yellows and oranges and reds soon to become the mosaics beneath our feet. The University, whose former logo had an oak […]
Welcome Back
New year, new start to the Freshman English blog. Never mind the older dates on the posts below. They’re probably new to you anyway. But, yes, our first go round stalled a bit in our second semester, when we were beset by technical problems and, alas, a narrowing-then-closed window for writing. The technical problems are […]
Term(inal) Papers
One of the topics of conversation around here has been “The Research Paper”; in particular, the question of whether FE instructors are required to assign a research paper. (You are definitely missing out on some productive conversations if you don’t hang around the FE Triangle [163, 126, and 125]). Many composition instructors are accustomed to […]
Old New Ideas
Apropos of very little, I wanted to offer a few snippets from what has to be my favorite article of the last year or so. It took me a while to get around to it (it’s from the November 2011 issue of College English), but I am fascinated. The article is itself comprised of snippets […]
Flow and Eddy
I like easy puzzles. My favorite puzzle, in fact, has only one piece. In a recent conversation with other writing instructors, I raised the question of why so many students come into the Writing Center asking for help with the flow of their writing: “Does my paper flow?” “Do my paragraphs flow?” It’s an understandable […]
Snow Write and the Eight Habits
In the last year, there has been some buzz in the field of rhetoric and composition over a document called the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing, which, from what I gather, is designed to provide some key terms for ongoing debates about what writing instruction should be. The document, however, is rather quiet about […]
“Thesis” Goes Viral
In my previous “Anti-Thesis Thesis” post, I offered some reasons why I have moved away from focusing on “thesis” in my classes. This week, I look at what happens when instructors (broadly conceived) focus on that one-sentence-at-the-end-of-the-first-paragraph-that-crystalizes-the-argument. The form of the forensic argument is often reduced synecdochally to its “thesis statement.” As such, the thesis […]
Improvisation and Composition #1
In an afterword to his extensively researched history, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, George Lewis expresses his disappointment with the limited rhetorical form of the scholarly book, especially as it pertains to his subject, the Chicago-based musical collective, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Although this […]